Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
The walk back to his study was quieter than Logan had expected.
Rose walked beside him at first, then slightly behind when the corridor narrowed, then beside him again when the passage widened near the turn toward the stairs.
None of it should have mattered. It was a simple thing, two people crossing a keep. Yet this awareness of every small shift between them was testing his patience.
He kept his hands at his sides and his pace even.
He could still hear the breathless tremor in her voice through the door. Still see, against all good sense, the pale line of her back in the firelight. The memory sharpened as they walked, then dulled, then returned again, to his increasing irritation.
He cleared his throat once, more to break his own thoughts than the silence between them.
Rose glanced up at him briefly.
The look was quick, but there was color still resting faintly in her cheeks. She lowered her gaze again almost at once, and for one ridiculous moment Logan found himself wondering whether she was thinking of the same thing.
He shut that down immediately.
“This way,” he said, though she had already followed him halfway through the keep and clearly needed no further instruction.
A soft, startled laugh almost escaped her before she seemed to catch it.
“I had gathered as much, my laird.” There was no mockery in it. Only a small, strained courtesy that made the corner of his mouth threaten to rise before he forced it still.
“Good,” he said, his tone flatter than he intended. “Wouldnae want ye gettin’ lost.”
That did it. When he looked at her again, she was trying, unsuccessfully, to hide the faintest smile. It changed her face more than it should have. Took some of the strain from it.
Logan looked away.
By the time they reached the study, he couldn’t wait to be done with it.
He opened the door and stood aside to let her enter first. Rose hesitated only half a heartbeat before stepping inside, her skirts brushing the threshold.
Logan shut the door behind them.
Rose turned slowly, taking in the room. He watched her gaze pause at the narrow window, the hearth, the broad oak table at the center. Then, as though remembering herself, she folded her hands lightly before her and looked toward him.
“Will ye sit?” he asked.
He gestured toward the chair opposite the table, then crossed behind it himself and lowered into his own seat.
The table between them should have eased something.
It did not. If anything, it only made him more aware of the fact that moments earlier there had been a door between them and not enough distance in the world.
Rose sat slowly, smoothing her skirts before folding her hands in her lap again. She looked like a woman prepared to receive sentence.
That did something unpleasant to his chest.
He leaned back slightly, then thought better of it and leaned forward instead, one forearm resting on the table, his other hand curling against the edge. Rose watched the movement, then very deliberately looked at the fire.
The silence stretched. Logan cleared his throat again.
“I asked ye here tae speak o’ why those men were after ye,” he said at last.
“Yes,” she said softly.
Another pause.
Rose lowered her eyes to her hands.
“If this is to be an interrogation,” she said carefully, “I confess I have imagined them... more severe.”
The remark was so unexpected that Logan looked at her fully before he could stop himself. “What?”
Her fingers tightened briefly over one another, and only then did he catch the uncertainty beneath the dry tone.
“I only meant,” she said, and now there was the barest trace of embarrassment in it, “that you look as though you regret asking me here.”
Against his will, a rough breath escaped him that was not quite a laugh.
Rose blinked.
Logan dragged a hand once down his jaw.
“It’s nae that,” he muttered.
Her brows lifted a fraction. “No?”
His patience with himself snapped. “I regret openin’ doors too quickly taenight.”
Rose went very still. The faint color in her cheeks deepened, and he was suddenly, brutally aware that he had confirmed what neither of them had wanted named.
He should have left it alone.
Rose stared at him for a moment, then looked down again so quickly he almost smiled.
“I see,” she said, though she very clearly did not know what to do with that.
Logan rubbed his thumb once over the rough grain of the table.
“Aye.” He straightened in his chair and forced his voice back into something steadier. “Tell me about the men.”
Whatever strange, embarrassing softness had passed between them receded at once.
Rose drew in a breath, and when she lifted her gaze again, the awkwardness had hardened into something more serious.
“They belong to Barnaby Henshaw,” she said.
The name meant nothing to Logan. “Who?”
“He is a landholder south of the border,” she said, eyes lowered. “A powerful one. Older than my father. Ruthless enough that no one opposes him unless they are forced to.”
Logan watched her closely. “And why is he sending armed men after ye?”
Rose held herself very still.
For a moment he thought she would answer him in some polished half-truth, something careful and incomplete. He had already seen how naturally she reached for composure when frightened.
Instead, she lifted her chin a little and said, “Because he means to marry me.”
Logan felt something harden in him. “Against yer will?”
“Yes. My parents learned he meant to come at dawn,” she said. Her voice remained controlled, but he could hear the strain beneath the calm. “He had made his intention clear before. He wanted Briar Hall—our lands. Their position near the border would give him better access into Scotland.”
Logan’s jaw tightened. “So yer parents sent ye away?”
“They had no choice.” The answer came too quickly.
He let it pass.
“I left before dawn with money and directions to distant relations.” Her hands tightened in her lap, the knuckles paling. “I could not reach them.”
That, at least, explained the road-worn state she had been in. Logan could picture it too easily: a woman raised in comfort and constraint trying to find her way alone through unfamiliar country while armed men searched for her.
Something in his chest pulled tight again.
“Why refuse him?” he asked, though he suspected he already knew enough to despise the man.
Rose looked at him then, and what he saw in her face made him sit very still.
She did not answer at once. Her fingers drew hard against the fabric of her skirts, and a faint strain touched her mouth before she turned her face away.
“He is known for cruelty,” she said. “Particularly where women are concerned.”
Logan’s hand flattened slowly against the table.
Rose swallowed once and looked away, fixing her gaze on the edge of the hearth.
“We met once,” she continued, and now every word seemed to cost her.
“My father invited him to Briar Hall. I was told to receive him politely.” Her mouth tightened faintly.
“He spoke as though the matter were already settled. As though I had no part in it beyond standing where he wished and smiling when he looked at me.”
The fire shifted behind her, sending a low crack through the room.
Rose’s voice dropped lower. “When we were briefly alone, he touched me.”
Logan felt a slow, dangerous heat settle in his chest.
“He took my hand first,” she said, staring now at nothing he could see.
“Then my waist. When I stepped back, he laughed and said I would learn soon enough that what belonged to him need not flinch from his touch.” Her fingers had gone white where they gripped her skirts.
“He spoke of me as one might speak of a horse to be purchased.”
The silence that followed was so complete Logan could hear the fire breathing behind him.
His body had gone very still.
He did not remember deciding to rise. Only that one moment he was seated and the next he was on his feet beside the table, both hands braced against it, his head bowed slightly as he fought the sudden urge to put his fist through stone.
When he spoke, his voice had roughened. “And yer faither would’ve given ye tae him?”
Rose flinched at the question and Logan reprimanded himself for asking it at once.
“He would not have,” she said, and now there was hurt in it too. “Not willingly. But Barnaby had made it plain refusal would cost us dearly. That is why they sent me away. They could not stop him by force.”
Logan shut his eyes briefly. I judged them too soon.
When he opened them again, Rose was watching him with obvious uncertainty, as though she did not know whether she had said too much.
He sank back into his chair more slowly this time.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
The words surprised them both.
Rose stared at him.
“I shouldnae have asked it like that,” Logan said, more quietly now. “Nae made ye defend them when ye’ve already lost so much.”
Something shifted in her face then.
“It is all right,” she said, though she sounded tired now more than anything else. “You had cause to ask.”
“And the men in the tavern?” he asked instead, his tone more careful now. “They were sent tae bring ye back alive.”
“I assume so.” She lifted one shoulder faintly, though the movement lacked ease. “Barnaby would not destroy what he considers his.”
The fury that stirred in Logan at that sentence was so immediate he felt it in his teeth.
He had known men like that. Men who looked at women and saw only leverage, lineage, possession. He had never had patience for them. Tonight, he found he had less than ever.
“He’ll nae come through me gates and take ye,” he said before he meant to.
Rose went still again.
Logan realized, too late, what he had sounded like. His jaw hardened, but he did not retract it entirely.
“What I mean,” he said, voice flatter now, “is that he’ll nae seize a guest o’ mine while she’s under me roof. Ye’re safe here.”
Rose’s gaze did not leave his face. The candlelight caught low in her eyes, making them seem darker than they were.
“Thank you,” she said.
He leaned back, folding his arms across his chest.